Eotvos, Peter / Alois Zimmermann, Bernd / Smolka, Martin

Musica Viva 15

Label: NEOS Music Country: Germany

"Peter Eötvös is one of those who set the tone in the New Music scene, not just as a composer but also as a conductor and teacher. "Cap-ko" is the homage to Eötvös' great model Bartók. That applies even to the details. Bartók's penchant for parallel lines gave Eötvös the idea of using an instrument that makes it possible to play these parallel lines on the piano not with two hands but rather with one. This necessitated that Eötvös rediscovered the digital keyboard. For that made possible that a second note sound with every note played, with the interval between the notes alterable at will, as with an organ mixture. In addition there is a traditional grand piano with a fixed right pedal, which produces an echolike reverberation with every note played that is never muted. Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays both instruments alternately.

Bernd Alois Zimmermann does not have to be introduced anymore. With his opera "Die Soldaten" and his "Requiem für einen jungen Dichter" he became known in the 1960s as one of the leading composers of the generation that emerged after the Second World War. The violin concerto is a work that displays the characteristics of Zimmermann's composition: It sets ist tone forcefully and unmistakably.

Martin Smolka works with intervals that he finds in "natural" sounds. His works, in which he uses various forms of microtonality, are performed at all the current festivals for contemporary music - this one, recorded at "musica viva" in Munich was premiered in Donaueschingen in 2000: "I was asked to write a choral piece on the subject of violence in our society. But I was rather attracted by the violence that our society commits - against nature, against our home planet. And I preferred to be positive in my music rather than creating a kind of protest song." "-NEOS